Finally!!! The Minutes to the Last Meeting

Have a seat. Pour some coffee. The Apple Dumpling Gang has something to say.

Ok, first, let’s go over what the agenda was. And may I say Kudos, because somebody has been reading this blog.

Considering their previous ‘agendas’ this is amazing. As you may recall, their earlier attempts were basically “Start, talk, end.” They are clearly getting better.

Yes, it was a pretty low bar, but we take our wins where we can.

And then finally the minutes for the actual meeting.

Page 2

Page 3

Dale will serve as the Chairperson so Matt can take minutes. – This is funny only if you know Dale.

And then “Roll Call for Quorum.” And they list a bunch of attendees. I’ve no idea what the attendees have to do with a quorum. I suspect the trustees don’t either.

“Conflict of Interest Declaration-None identified or declared”. Wait, here’s my surprised look.

“Gary Vogelsang talked about the Federal Disaster Relief opportunity from the FSA”- And that’s the whole note on that.

“Anette Weller talked about a new Trash Collection Service looking to branch into the local area.” OK.

“Dale submitted that he was talking with Tod Stewart and that the Road District should become more self-sufficient.” What??!!! More self-sufficient???? Do you mean like how the road district was before somebody came on board? With volunteers and people being neighborly? I’m wracking my brain to try to remember just what happened that changed all that.

“Treasurer Report/Update – I will attach the Treasurer Report with these minutes
Current balance & collections status
-Aggregate expenses to date
-Budget category re-allocation {requires separate Trustee motion}”

I’ll address this later.

“Secretary Report/Update
Open Meeting SDCL 1-25-13 reading/declaration {requires separate Trustee motion}. This has been moved to the annual meeting in May.
Tentative 2026 Annual Meeting Date. May 5, 2026“

Ok, I will again say that the new law stating boards had to go over the Open Meeting Laws is still a complete waste of time unless you mandate these boards attend a simple training course. We are still dealing with people who do not understand the definition of a ministerial meeting. People who refuse to obey simple statutes until they are forced to address them in a meeting Pierre. And then ‘huzzah’… Golly, we didn’t know. Even though you were told repeatedly. So, simply reading, and knowing Dale, likely ‘interpreting’ the Open Meeting Laws for the sheep at his feet, is not a step in the right direction.

I’ll post a real quick thing on this new law.

New Business – Chairperson
Appointment for vacated President position
Dale will assume the position of Trustee – President and Dale will reach out to see if Crystal Farrokhi would be willing to accept a temporary trustee appointment and serve as the Treasure.
Dale and Matt approve of this course of action

Dale will assume the role? No… color me surprised. And he will ‘reach out to Crystal’. Gee, never saw THAT coming.

Almost like a plan. And it sounds like it WILL BE happening. Not at all like it already has. And I’m trying to remember what the law says about this. Oh, but no need, because Dale ‘reached out’ to the experts and took copious notes and explains it all to us. I’m on pins and needles waiting for his interpretations of what he heard, assuming any of this ever happened.

There are five requirements regarding Road Districts

–Trustees can only be elected during an annual meeting

-Trustees can not serve longer than a 3 year term

–Trustees are not elected for a specific position. Once Trustees are elected during the annual meeting in May, an organization meeting will be held where the trustees will be selected for a specific position.

–There is a minimum requirement of 3 trustees required for Road Districts and a trustee may only hold 1 position and may not hold multiple positions

-If a trustee position is vacated, the remaining trustees may appoint a replacement trustee and position until the next annual election where that appointed trustee will vacate the position and the elected trustee will be put in place.

I’m going to address most of these later in a separate post and you’ll see why, but did want to comment on the fourth one. “and a trustee may only hold 1 position and may not hold multiple positions“…

This is too funny. Long time readers may remember that we pointed out a couple years ago that the ‘activation’ of this road district was not lawful for several reason, one being that a married couple, considered one person for road district requirements, held ALL the positions on the board for several months. And then for quite some time held 2 of them. Basically a quorum all by themself. And then of course the fact that they didn’t even own property with the district was another issue, but was still voting and passing a tax for the rest of us.

Yeah… nothing to see here.

Moving on-

CY 2026 road maintenance
-Problem areas/conditions
-Problem areas were discussed and the trustees are looking at solutions
-Contractor services search
-Dale will reach out to receive multiple bids from different vendors to provide road maintenance services

“the trustees are looking at solutions“… is an issue. The minutes should actually tell people what the possible solutions are. It’s actually kind of the main point of meeting minutes. What should be happening is that these solutions are discussed in a public meeting and THEN public comment. Not sure if I already mentioned this but this boards allowance for ‘public comment’ before anything happens in the meeting is just more smoke and mirrors on the Board’s behalf.

Most boards who are ‘above board’… (bwahahahahaa), would invite discussion continually throughout the meeting. Ah, but the law does not require that, so this board doesn’t. <shrugs> It’s boards like this that will prompt the state to write that into law.

“-Contractor services search” <chuckle> This is something we have mentioned repeatedly over the years. It was never legal to just hand the work to the guy they always use. They are supposed to get bids. Especially since they are unlawfully imposing a special maintenance fee/special assessment fee, as that name changes all the time, and as you may recall their answer to the court stated it was ALWAYS a levy and NEVER a special assessment, and then they admitted to the commission in Pierre that it really was a Special Assessment. All of that is in public record, and published in this site.

-Dale will reach out to receive multiple bids from different vendors to provide road maintenance services.

What could possibly go wrong? Let me guess what the next meeting minutes will look like. “Dale talked to several contractors and our current contractor is the only one who will do the work.” Or some such phrasig, where we will have no idea who he talked to and what the requirements were for the contract, it will be business as usual. Well, at least until we can get this board audited. As you may recall from a treasurers report of Crystal Farrokhi, the numbers are a bit sketch. Golly can’t wait for her to be back in the position or ‘treasure’ … as Matt puts it.

And Adjournment at 1036… all of this took 34 minutes.

Stay tuned for 2 more posts (at least) concerning issues we can see here.